


Unsettled Nighttime Creatures

by mindlesshappy



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, F/M, You know nothing Nick Scratch, nick has weirdly read everything wrong, only the best kind there is, post part 2, post saving Nick, unnecessary angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-15 12:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18499168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindlesshappy/pseuds/mindlesshappy
Summary: We all know Sabrina is going to save Nick. This is how Nick reacts to being saved - which, spoilers alert - is like a very stupid warlock.





	1. You Wanna Leave, You're On Your Own

Even before he reached the brink of consciousness, he realized something was different, the violent screaming voice of the dark lord promising innumerable tortures if he didn’t set him free – was not there anymore. He kept his eyes closed for a moment, cherishing this peace, and hoping it wasn’t another trickery of Lucifer to lull him into a false belief that he had been rescued. He tested his body, he could wriggle his fingers, his lids didn’t feel leaden, and he realized the sleeping curse seemed to have been lifted. He heard a slight strain of a song as he dared to open his eyes. Even before he realized where he was, he saw her sitting next to her in a very familiar armchair.

“Dorcas? How?” That was all he could muster painfully from his hellfire scorched throat. Dorcas, who was engrossed in humming some childish lullaby and sewing a voodoo doll (which on close inspection, looked like a brilliant replica of Father Blackwood), took a few moments to realize that the sound came from the prone body lying in the bed.

“Nicky! You’re awake!” Dorcas stabbed her needle through the face of the doll and hastily put it aside. She rushed to grab a glass of water for him, and as he followed her movements, he realized why the surroundings were feeling familiar – he was in Sabrina’s room. Dorcas helped him sit up and for a minute straight all he did was drink the water in gulp-full, for no amount seemed to satiate his arid wasteland of a mouth. “How?” He asked again as he finally took a breath in between.

“Sabrina Spellman and her annoying sense of righteousness, of course. And as to how I can’t really say Nicky dear.” Dorcas said with a slight smile that seemed quite tired. “She spent weeks planning, then went into hell all alone.” Nick’s eyes grew bigger at that, suddenly forgetting all about the hows and whys, but Dorcas was more interested in completing her story at her own pace. “She said something about being the only one to go to hell be able to come back because of the blood of devil is in her veins. Agatha and I were keeping a watch at the gates of hell for her, along with her mortal friends. Two days later, she comes out with your sleeping body in her arms and hands you over to the Witch Hunter and walked back into hell.” Dorcas broke off to stare at the open door when there was a sound outside but nobody came.

“Sabrina…” Nick prompted her, only interested in knowing the wellbeing and whereabouts of the girl he had sacrificed himself for in the first place.

“Oh, well, she had something to discuss with Lilith, I was told. It has been four days. We were actually hoping she would be back before you woke up after the aftereffects wore off. Well, I guess you’ll just have to wait some more, time works differently in the unholy lands. I will get you something to eat.” Dorcas gave him a fleeting kiss on his cheek before walking out of the room.

Nick looked around the room, each and every memory of the moments he had spent there rushing to him in furious tides.

“ _I don’t think I can ever trust you again_.” He could hear the anger in her voice echo against the walls as he remembered their last conversation in this room at the foot of the bed. He wondered if he was a reason she was willingly not coming back to her own house. He held no misguided beliefs that she had done any of this out of love for him. As Dorcas had said, it had been her sense of righteousness, her belief that the Dark Lord being her father, the apocalypse being her fault, because of which she needed to put a final end to the war, and maybe that was the reason she had to save him. The fact also was that he could not look at her, the pity in her eyes for him, the last look he had seen before binding Satan to himself, after everything. He tested his magic with a basic summoning spell to call for the picture of Sabrina and Harvey kept on the other side of the bed. He felt the drain of it in him, however slight. Before he would not have even felt a spell of this kind. He sighed, knowing it would be a long time before his magic could be as powerful as before.

“Thank you for saving me, Spellman.” He caressed a thumb over her smiling face and felt a pang of longing in his heart before he put down the picture. He needed to get away from there but he wondered where to. The Academy, maybe? But he realized that with Blackwood on the run, he had no idea what or who waited for him there. Then he remembered the small alcove in the rafters of the Desecrated Church, a place he had chanced upon in his wandering after the funeral of his parents. He got up from the bed to test his legs and realized that he was not in the period costume he had been wearing when the face-off went down. He looked down at the plain black t-shirt and track pants he was in and groaned inwardly hoping it wasn’t the mortal boyfriend who had changed his clothes. He took a deep breath and teleported himself out of there. And that was how when Dorcas came back to the room, with Agatha. Harvey and Roz in tow, they found the room empty.

“Brina is so going to kill me!” Harvey said drawing a hand over his face.


	2. If I Stop Trying, We Start Dying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am posting it as and when I write because if I try to wait and put it on a schedule, I'm so going to leave this unfinished. Oops.

It took Nick more than a few jumps to reach the Church. Luckily he had had enough brains left unscrambled to decide to not attempt teleporting there directly. By the time he reached there, it was dead of the night and there was nothing alive in the building expect for the floating candles that were left over from that night’s unholy mass. He dragged himself to a nearby pew and sat down to gather his breath. He looked around and realized that some things had been changed – instead of the upside down cross facing the pews was a symbol which he assumed was of Lilith. The Church seemed to have changed their allegiance, and it was a sensible thing to have done. Nick went down on his knees and prayed, for the first time in his life, to the rightful Queen of Hell, thanking her for keeping him well and praying that she sent Sabrina back soon, before he lay down on the pew, realizing he had no energy left to climb the rafters or even teleport himself there.

 

Lilith knew Sabrina had been restless from the moment she had gotten the young warlock Nicholas out of the boundaries of hell and had been asked to stay back, but she also knew that if there was any way to end the civil war the Plague Kings had waged against her, it was to attain legitimacy from the only heir of the Dark Lord. It had taken some time and a coronation that Lilith had hoped she would not need. Anybody who had come and bent the knee before her after Sabrina put the crown on her head, had been spared, all else had been banished or enslaved by the combined powers of the two.

The lesser demon whose throat had been in Sabrina’s grasp had just disintegrated when Lilith turned to her with a devilish smile.

“Your warlock is awake.” Lilith said putting a hand on Sabrina’s cheek lovingly.

“Nick…” The name escaped her lips as her eyes shone bright, reflecting the fires of pits. “How do you know?”

“He just prayed to me, asking for your safe return.” A chuckled escaped Sabrina’s lips. “Go on. We are almost done here. I can catch a few stragglers on my own.” Lilith patted her cheek and turned around the slash at the demon that had been running towards them before turning back towards Sabrina and teleporting her away with a flick of her wrist.  
In the blink of an eye, Sabrina found herself right outside the wards of the Spellman home. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the air devoid of sulphur and felt the clean wind on her skin after such a long time being in close proximity of the raging fires. She ran towards the door and saw Salem sitting on the stoop. The familiar spotted her too and jumped into her arms.

“Oh, I missed you too Salem.” Sabrina cuddled him closer but the cat sniffed at all the odours of hell she had brought with herself and squirmed out of her grasp with a snarl. “How rude!” Sabrina said scrunching her nose and continued running up the stairs to her room. The commotion she and Salem had created seemed to have stirred all the creatures in the house as she heard multiple footfalls running towards her room, the same place where she was running to.

“Is he back?” She heard the hopeful voice of Roz coming down the stairs from the attic with another set of footsteps behind her. Sabrina drew her brow in confusion but continued towards her room, where she had instructed them to keep Nick but found the bed empty. As she looked around she saw Dorcas curled up in an armchair next to the bed and Agatha asleep in the divan under the window. They both shot out of their spots and looked around hopefully before their eyes fell on Sabrina at the door.

“Sabrina.” Dorcas said trying to school her features to not looking fearful of the utterly fierce and untameable look of Sabrina as she stood there with her arms crossed against her chest.

“Where is he?” Sabrina asked slowly.

“Oh dear!” Hilda said taking in her dishevelled niece as she reached the room with a half asleep Zelda scrambling behind her. 

“You’re back!” Harvey came to a stop behind the aunts along with Roz and pushed through the ladies to hug her but stopped looking at both her fiery eyes and ash and soot-covered being of hers, the same view that had stopped her aunts from crushing her in their arms.

“Where is Nick, Harvey?” She asked again.

“He woke up this evening and asked us…” Dorcas began and then felt the heat of three glares on her before she decided to change her words. “…asked me about how he got out. And I told him you rescued him and went back to hell for some reason. I went to the kitchen to get him to eat something and he had vanished.” She looked at Sabrina and gulped, wishing Prudence was here to stare down Sabrina before she cursed her. Before Sabrina could say something, Salem padded in through the crowd, meowing loudly.

“What do you mean he teleported?” Sabrina looked down at her familiar who was staring at her with her large beady eyes and meowed in return. “You were here? You saw it?” Sabrina was engrossed in the conversation with her familiar that no one understood before Dorcas remembered that the cat had been sleeping on the floor next to the divan when Nick had woken up. “He said something to… to my picture?” Sabrina said in confusion before her eyes fell on the frame lying on the bed. She moved ahead and picked it up realizing that it was one of the only pictures of her and Harvey that she still kept in the room and sat down on the bed.

“I wonder where he is?” She sighed.

“We’ll find him, Sabrina. You should clean up and then get some sleep.” Hilda said coming closer and wiping a streak of soot from her chin.

“I can’t… I need to find him.” Sabrina said getting up from her spot before Zelda put her hands on her shoulders and pushed her back down.

“You got him back from hell. It is not going to be that hard to find him in Greendale. For Lilith’s sake, take a bath, you smell awful, and get some sleep. We’ll all get to finding him first thing in the morning.” Zelda said with a tight smile.

“Okay, Aunty.” Sabrina said with a sigh and walked towards her bathroom just as all the other occupants of the room filed out. “I’ll smite his ass back to hell for pulling this stunt on me.” Harvey chuckled as he heard her before she closed the bathroom door behind her.


	3. Maybe I Don't Want You Either

Considering that it had been close to witching hour when Sabrina had returned from Hell, she was surprised to hear muffled sounds coming from the kitchen when she awoke from a short and disturbed nap a little after dawn and decided to get a head start to finding her runaway boyfriend. The other inmates of the house seemed to have had the same idea she realized as she entered the kitchen and found her aunt Hilda flipping pancakes for a horde of teenagers – both real and apparent, for who knew how old the Weird Sisters really were.

“Good morning aunties.” She said walking into the kitchen and speaking over the din created by the unlikely Brady bunch. “And other unnecessary people.” She said with Cheshire grin, earning shouts of disapproval from all her friends.

“Good morning Sabrina. I’m happy to see you seemed to have gotten some semblance of sleep last night, however short it might’ve been.” Zelda said from the head of the table, right when the doorbell rang and Roz got up from the table while no one else made a move, as if they had all been doing this for a long time. Sabrina wondered what had been happening in the house while she was in Hell. Roz came back with a yawning Theo in tow who launched into Sabrina’s arms the moment he saw her.

“You’re back!” Theo said with a sleepy grin and everyone who realized that they had not gotten the chance to hug her the night before looked at each other and launched themselves on her in an erratic and unstable pile of a group hug. Agatha and Dorcas who were still sitting awkwardly at the table looked at the weird group and rolled their eyes. And this was exactly how Ambrose, astral projecting to the kitchen, found his family.

“Uh, guys?” Ambrose said no one in specific before Sabrina poked her head out of the group and looked at him.

“Ambrose!” Sabrina’s happy voice was all it took for the group to break apart.

“Cuz! You’re back!” Ambrose clapped his hands. “Were you successful? Where’s Nick?” He looked around but failed to find him.

“Hiding somewhere till I find him and wring his neck.” Sabrina said furiously confusing Ambrose even further.

“Uh, I understand none of what you said.” Ambrose said looking at the bird that had landed on the window sill. “But I don’t have time for an explanation. I just wanted to let Auntie Zee know that we have finished with the covens in Forks and are now moving down south. So far we have no clues about Blackwood’s whereabouts.”

“That’s alright Ambrose. You both stay safe.” Zelda nodded at him before he vanished.

“I still can’t get used to that.” Theo said to Roz in a whisper as everybody settled back down on the table.

“So…” Sabrina began, looking at each and every one of them in turn. “Where do we start?”

“Uh… the Academy?” Agatha proposed.

“Well we can try, but I was at the Academy till late last night.” Zelda replied. “If he had turned up in the dormitory then someone would have informed me.”

“We can still look. He could’ve gone somewhere in the Academy away from prying eyes.” Hilda said at which everyone nodded.

“We’ll go look there.” Agatha and Dorcas said in unison and got up to leave.

“How did you know he had woken up?” Roz asked Sabrina as the two witches left.

“Uh…” A smile crept up on Sabrina’s lips as she remembered what Lilith had said to her before sending her back. “He prayed to Lilith that I come back safe and she sent me back as soon as she heard him.”

“Could he be in your Church then?” Harvey suggested.

“After the Academy, that’s the most likely place.” Sabrina said nodding. “I’ll go there.” She said getting up.

“We’ll come with you.” Her aunties said getting up along with her.

“And us?” Theo asked, looking around the table at the only mortals.

“You guys could look in the forest. Apart from the Academy and the Church that was the only place we spent much time.” Sabrina suggested to her friends and they all began walking out of the room together.

“Sabrina, we’re forgetting a place.” Zelda stopped in her tracks. “That club where the two of you used to hang out.”

“Dorian’s Grey Room?”

“Yes, that one. He could’ve gone there.” Zelda asked and Sabrina nodded in approval. “We could go there first. If he had gone there, Dorian would have helped him out.”

“Let’s go there and then head to the Church. In the meantime, you guys head out and check the forest.” Sabrina nodded to her friends and they left ahead of them. “And Salem…” Sabrina said turning back to where her familiar was perched on the bannister. “Keep an eye out. If he returns, inform me immediately.” She ordered and the cat purred in response as everyone hurriedly walked out of the house.

 

After having rudely woken up Dorian, the ladies realized that the Grey Room was a bust and Agatha had found them on the way to the Church to tell them he wasn’t at the Academy either. Sabrina had begun to wonder if he had teleported himself somewhere out of Greendale altogether, maybe to his family’s estate that was still managed in his name even though nobody from the Scratch family had lived there in years. But she was still hopeful that he would not go so far away without knowing that Sabrina was back safe and sound. When the four witches walked into the empty church, Sabrina had been hoping to see him just sitting there, like a lost puppy, but he was not.

Sabrina fell into the pews, dejected, realizing that maybe, Nick’s prayer to Lilith had been a last Hail Malphas sent out into the universe as thanks for Sabrina before he vanished out of her life, and just like that tears started pouring out of her with gut-wrenching scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said, I'm posting this as I'm writing, which also means I just spent the night finishing it. There's only one more part to go. Which will come sometime today, I promise.


	4. You Make Me Wanna Love, Hate, Cry, Take, Every Part of You

It was in the wee hours of the morning when Nick had woken up and had enough strength in himself to teleport to the alcove before he settled down to plan out his next step. He knew he could not really recover his strength alone in the church, so he decided to get to Dorian’s, once it was a decent enough hour, to recuperate. At Dorian’s, he could even get the news if and when Sabrina came back. Once he was well enough, he could probably get out of Greendale altogether, because going back to the Academy meant facing the Spellmans, and he could not do that after having broken their trust in such a way, maybe a few centuries down the line, but not today.

He had been planning out, counting hours just as he heard someone enter the church. He was wondering who would come to the Church so early in the day. The Church was only populated during the day with Academy activities and post-sundown by worshippers. It was then that he heard the heart-shattering wail that tugged him in the pit of his stomach and he leaned out to see the four women down below and in the middle the same halo of brilliant silver hair that he had been craving to touch since the moment he woke up. And he realized with horror that the unearthly sound had been hers.

 

Zelda took hold of Agatha and pulled her out of the building as soon as she saw the tears threatening to spill out of her niece’s eyes. If she could not stop her from crying, she could at least save her some dignity by not letting one of her gravest enemies see her crumbling, however much they believed in this unlikely ceasefire between themselves.

Hilda sat down next to Sabrina and gathered her in her arms, letting her sob and cry as she lovingly patted her back and spoke sweet nothings to her.

“Shush baby. We’ll find him.” Hilda said to her again and again till she felt her baby girl calming down and the sobbing stopped.

“Why did he leave Auntie? Why would run away like this?” Sabrina looked up at one half of the mother-figure in her life.

“Well, I don’t know darling. But we will find him and then you can ask him, alright?” Hilda said with a smile before getting up and putting a hand out for Sabrina to take.

“You go ahead, Auntie. I want to pray to Lilith for a while before we go.” Sabrina smiled and wiped her tears as Hilda walked out of the desecrated unholy halls.

“Lilith.” Sabrina lightly said. She could not bring herself to refer to her as the Dark Mistress as her Auntie Zelda had taken to calling her, not after having fought hordes of demons side by side for days. To her, Lilith now felt like another friend, a friend she would probably fight through heaven for. “Do you know where he is? Can you please find him for me? Or can you… Can you just tell Nick that I really really love him? I just want him back with me. I don’t know why he left. If he believes that I still hate him for betraying me to Lucifer, then he really is an absolute moron. I could forgive you for tricking me into fulfilling the prophecy, then why can’t he believe that I forgave him for it even before he went ahead and sacrificed himself. Can you…” Sabrina felt fresh tears falling down her cheeks and she stopped before she broke down again.

“Sabrina.” For a moment she thought she was imagining him, that her mind was playing a cruel trick on her, as she turned around at the sound of his hauntingly familiar voice. But she was not. There he was standing before her, a broken look on his face. And that was all it took before she found herself running into his arms.

Nick drew a deep breath in, inhaling her scent, blueberries and fresh pinecones, and held her as close to himself as physically possible. They didn’t quite know till how long they stood there, holding each other, but it was only when Nick’s weak body faltered a little under the strain of holding the two of them up that Sabrina broke away from him.

From the look on her face, a resounding slap against his cheek was the last thing that he was expecting and he took a slight step back from the force of it.

“You have a lot of explaining to do Mister, running off like that, giving me a heart attack!” Sabrina glared at him with all her might and he just let out a huffed chuckled before stepping forward and taking her face in his hands.

“I am really really sorry Spellman.” He said with a smiled and captured her lips in a kiss that he had been dying for since the moment he saw her face. Sabrina and her anger melted the second his lips touched hers and she snaked her arms behind his back pulling him closer and closer. The kiss lingered on longer till they were both completely out of breath. It felt like being underwater with lungs burning without air and neither of them wanting to surface to breathe. When they finally did, Nick leaned his forehead against hers without opening his eyes. Sabrina fluttered hers open, looking at every inch of him up close, drinking in the sight she had been thirsting for for so long.

“I love you, Nicholas Scratch.” She whispered to him, wanting to be the first one to say it this time around.

“I love you too, Sabrina Spellman.” When he opened his eyes, Sabrina saw them sparkling like never before, and her heart finally beats again in relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is over. I'd probably have written more - an exasperated Lilith coming to tell them to stop annoying her with their cheesy love when she had so much work to do, Nick getting beaten up by a lot of people when they finally walk out of the church, the conversations - why Nick left, how Sabrina saved him... but well I thought this was not a bad place to end. I can't believe this story started with merely the image of Dorcas sewing a voodoo doll at someone's bedside.  
> Also, I am really sorry for all the drama, it really was not in my hands, once I started writing everyone started behaving on their own. But really, isn't drama the best catalyst for unnecessary angst?


	5. Shadow Preachers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There wasn't supposed to be Part 5 to this. Honestly, this technically should've been published in one go but I was too restless to wait till I finished writing it all. 
> 
> This part, which is the last part I swear, had been nagging at me since I finished Chapter 4 because I believe this conversation really needed to happen. Now I don't know how in character this conversation really is, but this is how it flowed for me. I hope you people like it.

Nick was staring at Sabrina still, even hours after their reunion at the church. They were lying in her bed, with the intention of resting, but neither could drift to sleep after the hours of having had nothing but adrenalin course through their veins. Sabrina was lying on her back, looking up at the ceiling trying to parse through her last week and thinking about where they would go from here, and Nick lay next to her on his side, his arms folded under his head, just looking at her.

“You have been staring at me all day Nick.” Sabrina said matter-of-factly, turning towards Nick and mirroring his posture. Nick just hummed in agreement and continued to look at her with an expression that could only be defined as devotion. “Why?”

“Because I still can’t believe it.” Nick sighed a put a hand against her cheek, rubbing his thumb over her cheekbone before retracting and lying down on his back.

“What can’t you believe? That you’re not in Hell anymore?”

“I can’t believe I’m here with you, after everything. After breaking your trust like that, that you still found it in yourself to risk your life to get me out of hell.”

“Well that’s just stupid, why would I not?” Sabrina asked with disbelief, raising herself up on an elbow to stare him down. “Okay, I think I need to start from the beginning.” She sighed. “When you went in, sacrificing yourself the way you did, I was devastated. But it was not over you, it was over the fact that someone, anyone, had to pay for my faults – for the choices I made in my life. All my life I had never been able to compartmentalize my emotions the way I suddenly could after that moment. There was sorrow over the casualties of this war that I started, there was anger at the trust broken, and there was mistrust over everything you had ever said or done, even in those last moments. But in the haze of it all, there was a belief that I needed to get you out, that you did not deserve to spend all of the eternity being tortured by Satan.” She stopped when she felt the soft caress of his hand over her cheek again as he wiped away the tears that had begun falling. She reached up to hold his palm against her cheek and intertwined their fingers. 

“So I decided to deal with everything one by one, and my first step became finding a way to get you out. It was a mammoth task really. So much time spent researching with Cassias, which I’m sure the nerd in you is dying to know, well get to that later. Anyway, in the middle of this, in the middle of spending days and nights trying to figure out how to get you out, I began dealing with everything else too, at first with the mistrust over your actions – replaying in my head again and again everything little thing you had done and said – and I realized when exactly it was that your actions began to be layered by Satan’s devotions. And the fact is, even before it, I could see the love in your eyes, even if I didn’t know then. So then came the forgiveness, I could forgive you for not saying no to the Devil because you believed in your heart that there was no harm in it. Over time I also believed that I could trust you again because Dark Lord or not, you would have done and acted exactly the way you did. He was just a push that you needed to act on what you wanted.” Sabrina smiled at the small yet vigorous nod that Nick gave and realized that there were tears down his face too.

“And by the time I had the plan in place, I realized that I wasn’t going to get you back out of an obligation, but for love, because I couldn’t bear to live on this plain without you for another minute.” She reached forward and laid her head on his chest over his heart, letting the rhythm calm her after having had to remember all those moments without him, worrying for him. “So yes, I love you, and that is why I went to hell to get you back.” She murmured into his chest and he leaned forward and kissed her hair. “Do you need any further proof to believe me, Mr. Scratch?” Sabrina raised her head to look at him, resting her chin on his chest.

“Not even a bit, Spellman.” He smiled and pecked her lightly on her lips before holding her closer to himself. Slowly, they fell asleep just like that.

Hours later, the Spellman sisters found them like that when they came in to check in the early moments of daylight. Seeing them sleeping soundly, content with where they were, they just left, after murmuring a few protection spells over them.

**Author's Note:**

> I would have loved to write Sabrina saving Nick, but anything I could come up with was a bastardized version of Percy and Annabeth in Tartarus, so I decided to concentrate on a very apologetic Nick not knowing what to do after he comes back from Hell. I shall finish this soon. Fingers crossed.  
> Fic title and Chapter titles are from Zella Day's 'Shadow Preachers'.


End file.
